Yahoo, Pursuing Google, Announces New Tools for Search BOSS

Yahoo issued more tools for Yahoo Search BOSS, two days after Google rolled out additional features for its Google App Engine in a high-profile announcement.

BOSS, which stands for Build Your Own Search Service, allows developers to design their own search products via an open-search Web services platform. In February 2009, Yahoo opened access to the structured data that Yahoo SearchMonkey has pulled from Websites via Yahoo Web Crawler; developers could then use this data to tinker with the appearance of Yahoo search results.

The new Yahoo Search BOSS tools announced on April 9 include integration with Delicious content, new sorting functionality by date and/or a specified time range, and the ability to filter specific language results for a given market – including support in Czech, Hungarian and traditional Chinese.

In the first months of 2009, Yahoo has been integrating new features to its search engine, and opening itself further to developers, in a bid to eat into Google’s search engine market-share lead. In March 2009, Yahoo announced enhancements to SearchMonkey that would integrate flash video, games and slides into search results.

To take advantage of the burgeoning social-networking phenomenon, Yahoo has also been working on the development of Facebook applications, including Friends on Fire, which utilizes Yahoo’s Fire Eagle geo-location platform to display the user’s acquaintances’ locations on a map.   

Yahoo and Microsoft have been locked in an aggressive dance over a possible acquisition, with new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz saying that any negotiations over a purchase of Yahoo’s search business would be done "privately."

Both companies have been locked in a fierce battle with Google for market share, and all three companies’ announcements of upcoming search products, such as this one for Yahoo Search BOSS, have a tendency to come within a few days of another one announcing a brand-new solution.

On April 7, Google celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Google App Engine beta release by announcing the platform’s new Java support, as well as a new database import tool and Google SDC (Secure Data Connector), which gives users access to secure corporate data even when working with Google Apps outside the firewall.